“Did you hear something?”

 

Merks’ voice sounded hollow and muffled from behind his mask, which annoyed Aithne to no end but, of course, she could not ask him to take it off – it had been her idea for him to wear it in the first place, after all. And at least she didn’t have to see his face when he wore it. She shook her head. “Nothing but the echoes of our footsteps. It is as we suspected – there isn't much of value here, in information or resources. Looks like the Imperials did a good job picking this place dry. I'm not sure what Delphine expected. Why, did you hear something?”

 

“I…” Merks paused, then shook his head. “I thought I heard whispering, but it was probably just the way the air passes through this mask.”

 

“Does the mask work? It is supposed to increase power, but I’m not sure how.”

 

“It doesn’t increase power, exactly. I did some testing and my spells did not seem to be stronger. However, it does replenish my used mana at a rapid pace. I can cast nearly double the amount of spells in the same period of time.”

 

“Ah. Maybe it has a core of moonstone?”

 

“That would be my guess as well, although I didn’t want to…”

 

“Voices ahead,” Chyehye interrupted. “Perhaps that’s what you heard.”

 

“Voices?” Aithne frowned. “Who else would be here?”

 

Her wife shrugged. “Who can say? There are always treasure hunters poking about these old ruins. We’re here, aren’t we?”

 

“Well, yes, but that’s because Delphine asked us to. I had never even heard of…Korvanjund? Is that what she called it?”

 

Chyehye shrugged again. “That…sounds right.”

 

“It used to be a temple to Stuhn, one of the old gods,” Merks’ hollow voice informed them, and Aithne and Chyehye turned as one toward him.

 

Aithne blinked. “How do you know about it?”

 

Merks took his turn to shrug. “I had a phase when I was eight where I got very interested in the old gods, so I read all I could find on them.”

“Truly? Then do you know what the Imperials and Stormcloaks were looking for?”

 

“No. I do not recall anything of particular interest about this place. The followers of Stuhn were one of the more stringent groups – they despised wealth and gaudiness. That’s probably why this particular tomb has not been heavily raided in the past.”

 

“Interesting. Well, shall we see what our fellow explorers are looking for?”

 

But when they turned a corner and came across said explorers, all thought was erased from Aithne’s mind in an instant of blind fury.

 

In the center of the room, a fat male khajiit sat on a large portable chair eating berries while four naked female khajiit slammed away with pickaxes and shovels at a doorway occluded by rubble from some past structural collapse. Aithne recognized it for what it was in an instant and sprang into immediate action.

 

“SLAVER!” Fire arced from her hands, streaking toward the fat cat, who fell back then cried out as the chair tipped over, sending him sprawling to the ground as Aithne ‘s flame formed a spear aimed at his heart. She stormed forward, shouting, “DON’T WORRY! YOU’LL BE FREE IN A MOMENT!”

 

The male khajiit’s eyes boggled at the spear of flame that hovered an inch from his face as he began to make a choking sounds.

 

Aithne laughed as his fear fed some well of hatred she had not realized existed. “YES! GROVEL, YOU SICK…”

 

“No! Stop, leave him alone!”

 

Aithne blinked as two of the females jumped between her and the male, holding out their arms defensively. At the same time, the other two ran forward brandishing their pickaxes and it was only perhaps because of the intervention of her spouses (and, she supposed, Merks) that she didn’t have to make any rash decisions on how to deal with them; the orcs (and Merks) interposed themselves between her and the pickaxe-wielding cats.

 

Aithne shook her head and yelled out, “It’s okay! I know your instinct is to protect your master, but you are…”

 

“We’re not slaves!”

 

“…free now and…what?”

 

“We’re not slaves!” The speaker was one of the women in front of Aithne, her furry, naked, grey-with-black-stripes body quivering as she kept her arms out while the other ducked under the spear flame and dropped to her knees beside the male. “He is our guide! We hired him to help us!”

 

“Help…they why is he just sitting there? And why are you naked?”

 

“Because we hired him to guide us, not do the physical work! And swinging pickaxes is hot work!” The cat glanced backward as the one on her knees said something, then turned back around with a new tone of desperation. “Please! He’s choking on something! He needs help!”

 

“I…” Aithne stood frozen while the rest of the room started bustling around her – everyone, including Chyehye, Nyatt, and Merks rushed toward the downed khajiit. “…but…”

 

“Aithne!” Nyatt’s roar brought with it a spike of startled fear and lust, something he had never engendered in Aithne before, and it broke her from her confused reverie. “Get rid of this…spear thing before someone gets hurt!”

 

“I…um, yes! Of course!” She waved the flaming spear away and stumbled forward, but there were too many bodies in the way for her to accomplish anything but helpless watching, and even that was occluded enough that she had no clear idea what was happening until the bodies straightened up and the congestion eased, revealing the male breathing heavily between sips of water as the khajiit who had first gone to him patted his arm on one side while Chyehye knelt on the other, one arm around his shoulders to support him.

 

“Um…” Aithne gripped her hands into fists and fought to keep from squirming like a naughty child in front of her teacher. “I…apologize. I…um…thought you were…”

 

“A slaver, yes, this one heard you.” The khajiit lifted a haughty nose and sniffed. “Do you not know slavery is illegal? Even if it was not, this one would never be so low as to do such an abominable thing. This one has never felt so insulted.”

 

“Um, yes, I know, I just saw…”

 

“You saw nothing but what your own mind wished to see. This one thinks you must be a sick individual.”

 

Aithne flushed and bit her tongue; though she wanted to defend herself, she could think of no reasonable defense. She clutched the pendant she had received from Jorg and cursed herself internally – had she been able to hear their thoughts, she would not have made such a gaff.

 

That thought led to another, and she released the pendant and bent forward enough that it hung from her neck without touching her skin. The khajiits’ thoughts came into sharp relief and Aithne felt a flood of mixed feelings when she discovered they were telling the truth; although it would have been a balm to her embarrassment to find she had been right, it was good that he was not really a slaver.

 

She supposed.

 

She stayed well back as the khajiit (Wammu, was his name) was helped back onto his chair, where he sighed overly-dramatically (at least, to Aithne’s ears).

 

Upon query from Nyatt, D’u, the grey who had first spoken, explained, “We came to confirm a rumor that a Nord relic had been interred here; the Jagged Crown, it is called. If it was here, we thought to sell the information to the Stormcloaks, for this one suspected they would have keen interest in such an artifact. It took us nearly a decade to discover its whereabouts, piecing together the tiniest scraps of clues from a hundred disparate sources, only to arrive to find both the Stormcloaks and Imperials had somehow discovered its location already. This one would give her fortune to know how they learned of it.” She dressed as she spoke, as did the other females; when she was done, she motioned at the crumbled passageway. “With our prize taken, we have little choice but to pick through what treasures remain after the Imperials ransacked the place or leave with a huge profit loss.”

 

Aithne blinked at D’u, then at the mass of stones blocking the hall entryway. “Um. We can help. It’s…it’s the least we…I can do. To make up for…” she stopped and motioned with an awkward motion at Wammu.

 

D’u shrugged and held out her pickaxe. “This one will not say no to someone else doing this labor.”

 

Aithne blinked again, this time at the pickaxe, then shook her head. “No, not like that. Like this.”

 

She concentrated on the first stone in the pile as she felt the mana coalesce around her. “Zir̀ yu: iig.” The stone lifted up and she shifted it carefully away from the entrance before letting it drop.

 

“Ah. Of course. Well, this one will not gainsay you if you wish to help – Alkosh knows this one has no love of digging.”

 

Aithne nodded, thankful she had something to do to keep from having to discuss her embarrassing mistake, and began moving rocks, only pausing a moment to toss another nod in the direction of Merks when he stepped next to her and began to help.

 

Although she didn’t have to talk about it, she couldn’t help think about it. The scene, as she had first seen it, was etched in her mind and she scoured it for clues she should have picked up. Such as the lack of chains or collars, for instance. Or the lack of one of the purported slaves sucking her master’s cock, although that clue was a little more precarious since it would have been possible that had already been done. Also, Aithne had seen no slaves in her time in this new Skyrim. She didn’t believe for a moment there really weren’t any at all – such a pure world could not exist – but such a display as she had thought she had seen would have been a rather blatant showing of it. Although they weren’t in a place where others might be expected to come across them, so…

 

She shook her head, frustrated. At herself, at this situation, at these damn rocks blocking the way and taking so long to move. She wished she could just GRAB and YANK them out all at once; and as she thought it, she clenched her hand into a fist and jerked it back as if such an ability existed, as if some sort of spell defining the parameters of what she wanted, something requiring so many words and modifiers it would become a ten or more second cast and therefore almost certainly lead to a rebound that would kill them all, wouldn’t be required for such a…

 

Her thoughts froze in place as the remaining giant pile of stone and debris swept out of the opening in a rumbling rush straight toward her. She panicked and dropped her hands as she flinched back, but at her release, the pile crashed to the ground and only a few shards of stone and a momentous amount of dust found their way to her. She choked and coughed as her surprised lungs sucked in a full complement of the dust and found herself jealous of the unaffected Merks and his mask.

 

Well, unaffected by the dust.

 

“How…how did you…” he started, but was interrupted by the joyous cries of the khajiit.

 

“That was amazing!”

 

“This one is impressed, this one must admit.”

 

“That would have taken us three days!”

 

Even Wammu looked nonplussed, although he just harrumphed.

 

Aithne smiled at their praise but her mind was reeling as she tried to determine what, exactly, had just happened. Was this what Urag had meant when he said imagination was the key to true power? Certainly what she had imagined had come to pass, but the expenditure of that much energy should have been impossible without so many supporting spells, it would have – should have - taken a minimum of six mages working in concert to achieve it. No amount of imagination could overcome Hanzar’s Law.

 

She shook her head at Merks’ repeated queries, though she felt sympathy for his building frustration (she, also, wanted answers!), and kept quiet and out of the way, leaving the farewells for the khajiit to her spouses. She needed time to think. Or, better, time in the Arcaneum, where she could think and read. And take notes. And experiment. In retrospect, she should have continued to go back every day, at least for an hour or two, just to keep her presence established.

 

Well, and maybe she still could. She saw no reason why her agreement with Savos wouldn’t still stand. And doing so would give her back access to the bath. She shivered at the thought and it calcified her determination – she would make sure to go there once a day (with permission from her husband, of course – no reason to stir that pot). She needed some new books, anyway.

 

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